She was silent.
He drew a step nearer.
“You wish me to speak plainly?” he continued in a lower tone. “You give me leave to express the lurking thought which is in your own heart?”
She gave a slight inclination of her head, and he went on.
“You assume danger for the King, — but not danger from the knife of the assassin — or from the schemes of revolutionists! You judge him — as I do — to be in the grasp of the greatest Force which exists in the universe! The force against which there is, and can be no opposition! — a force, which if it once binds even a king — makes of him a life-prisoner, and turns mere ‘temporal power’ to nothingness; upsetting thrones, destroying kingdoms, and beating down the very Church itself in the way of its desires — and that force is — Love!”
She started violently, — then controlled herself.
“You waste your eloquence!” she said coldly; “What you speak of, I do not understand. I do not believe in Love!”
“Or jealousy?”
The words sprang from his lips almost unconsciously, and like a magnificent animal who has been suddenly stung, she sprang upright.
“How dare you!” she said in low, vibrating accents— “How dare you!”
Sir Roger’s breath came quick and fast, — but he was a strong man with a strong will, and he maintained his attitude of quiet resolution.
“Madam! — My Queen! — forgive me!” he said; “But as your humblest friend — your faithful servant! — let me have my say with you now — and then — if you will — condemn me to perpetual silence! You despise Love, you say! Yes — because you have only seen its poor imitations! The King’s light gallantries, — his sins of body, which in many cases are not sins of mind, have disgusted you with its very name! The King has loved — or can love — so you think, — many, or any, women! Ah! No — no! Pardon me, dearest Majesty! A man’s desire may lead him through devious ways both vile and vicious, — but a man’s love leads only one way to one woman! Believe it! For even so, I have loved one woman these many years! — and even so — I greatly fear — the King loves one woman now!”
Rigid as a figure of marble, she looked at him. He met her eyes calmly.
“Your Majesty asked me for the truth;” he said; “I have spoken it!”
Her lips parted in a cold, strained little smile.
“And — you — think,” she said slowly; “that I — I am what you call ‘jealous’ of this ‘one woman’? Had jealousy been in my nature, it would have been provoked sufficiently often since my marriage!”
“Madam,” responded Sir Roger humbly; “If I may dare to say so to your Majesty, it is not possible to a noble woman to be jealous of a man’s mere humours of desire! But of Love — Love, the crown, the glory and supremacy of life, — who, with a human heart and human blood, would not be jealous? Who would not give kingdoms, thrones, ay, Heaven itself, if it were not in itself Heaven, for its rapturous oblivion of sorrow, and its full measure of joy!”
A dead silence fell between them, only disturbed by a small silver chime in the distance, striking midnight.
The Queen again seated herself, and drew her book towards her. Then raising her lovely unfathomable eyes, she looked at the tall stately figure of the man before her with a slight touch of pity and pathos.
“Possibly you may be right,” she said slowly, “Possibly wrong! But I do not doubt that you yourself personally ‘feel’ all that you express, — and — that you are faithful!”
Here she extended her hand. Sir Roger bowed low over it, and kissed its delicate smoothness with careful coldness. As she withdrew it again, she said in a low dreamy, half questioning tone:
“The woman’s name is Lotys?”
Silently Sir Roger bent his head in assent.
“A man’s love leads only one way — to one woman! And in this particular case that woman is — Lotys!” she said, with a little musing scorn, as of herself,— “Strange!”
She laid her hand on the bell which at a touch would summon back her lady-in-waiting. “You have served me well, Sir Roger, albeit somewhat roughly — —”
He gave a low exclamation of regret.
“Roughly, Madam?”
A smile, sudden and sweet, which transfigured her usually passionless features into an almost angelic loveliness, lit up her mouth and eyes.
“Yes — roughly! But no matter! I pardon you freely! Good-night!”
“Good-night to your Majesty!” And as he stepped backward from her presence, she rang for Teresa, who at once entered.
“Our excommunication from the Church sits lightly upon us, Sir Roger, does it not?” said the Queen then, almost playfully; “You must know that we say our prayers as of old, and we still believe God hears us!”
“Surely, Madam,” he replied, “God must hear all prayers when they are pure and honest!”
“Truly, I think so,” she responded, laying one hand tenderly on Teresa’s hair, as the girl caressingly knelt beside her. “And — so, despite lack of priestcraft, — we shall continue to pray, — in these uncertain and dangerous times, — that all may be well for the country, — the people, and — the King! Good-night!”
Again Sir Roger bowed, and this time altogether withdrew. He was strung up to a pitch of intense excitement; the brief interview had been a most trying one for him, — though there was a warm glow at his heart, assuring him that he had done well. His suspicion that the King had admired, and had sought out Lotys since the day she saved him from assassination, had a very strong foundation in fact; — much stronger indeed than was at present requisite to admit or to declare. But the whole matter was a source of the greatest anxiety to De Launay, who, in his strong love for his Royal master, found it often difficult to conceal his apprehension, — and who was in a large measure relieved to feel that the Queen had guessed something of it, and shared in his sentiments. He now re-entered his room, and on doing so at once perceived that the King had returned. But his Majesty was busy writing, and did not raise his head from his papers, even when Sir Roger noiselessly entered and laid some letters on the table. His complete abstraction in his work was a sign that he did not wish to be disturbed or spoken to; — and Sir Roger, taking the hint, retired again in silence.
CHAPTER XXVII. — THE SONG OF FREEDOM
Revolution! The flame-winged Fury that swoops down on a people like a sudden visitation of God, with the movement of a storm, and the devastation of a plague in one! Who shall say how, or where, the seed is sown that springs so swiftly to such thick harvest! Who can trace its beginnings — and who can predict its end! Tragic and terrible as its work has always seemed to the miserable and muddle-headed human units, whose faults and follies, whose dissoluteness and neglect of the highest interests of the people, are chiefly to blame for the birth of this Monster, it is nevertheless Divine Law, that, when any part of God’s Universe-House is deliberately made foul by the dwellers in it, then must it be cleansed, — and Revolution is the burning of the rubbish, — the huge bonfire in which old abuses blazon their destruction to an amazed and terror-stricken world. Yet there have been moments, or periods, in history, when the threatening conflagration could have been stayed and turned back from its course, — when the useless shedding of blood might have been foregone — when the fierce passions of the people might have been soothed and pacified, and when Justice might have been nobly done and catastrophe averted, if there had been but one brave man, — one only! — and that man a King! But in nearly all the convulsive throes of nations, kings have proved themselves the weakest, tamest, most cowardly and ineffectual of all the heads of the time — ready and willing enough to sacrifice the lives of thousands of brave and devoted men to their own cause, but never prepared to sacrifice themselves. Hence the cause of the triumph of Democracy over effete Autocracy. Kings may not be more than men, — but, certes, they should never be less. They should not practise vices of which the very day-labourer whom they employ, would be ashamed; nor should the
y flaunt their love of sensuality and intrigue in the faces of their subjects as a ‘Royal example’ and distinctive ‘lead’ to vulgar licentiousness. The loftier the position, the greater the responsibility; — and a monarch who voluntarily lowers the social standard in his realm has lost more adherents than could possibly be slain in his defence on the field of honour.
The King who plays his part as the hero of this narrative, was now fully aware in his own mind and conscience of the thousands of opportunities he had missed and wasted on his way to the Throne when Heir-Apparent. Since the day of his ‘real coronation,’ when as he had expressed it to his thoughts, he had ‘crowned himself with his own resolve,’ he had studied men, manners, persons and events, to deep and serious purpose. He had learned much, and discovered more. He had been, in a moral sense, conquered by his son, Prince Humphry, who had proved a match for him in his determined and honourable marriage for love, and love only, — though born heir to all the conventions and hypocrisies of a Throne. He, — in his day, — had lacked the courage and truth that this boy had shown. And now, by certain means known best to himself, he had fathomed an intricate network of deception and infamy among the governing heads of the State. He had convinced himself in many ways of the unblushing dishonesty and fraudulent self-service of Carl Pérousse. And — yet — with all this information stored carefully up in his brain he, to all appearances, took no advantage of it, and did nothing remarkable, — save the one act which had been so much talked about — the refusal of land in his possession to the Jesuits for a ‘religious’ (and political) settlement. This independent course of procedure had resulted in his excommunication from the Church. Of his ‘veto’ against an intended war, scarcely anything was known. Only the Government were aware of the part he had taken in that matter, — the Government and — the Money-market! But the time was now ripe for further movement; and in the deep and almost passionate interest he had recently learned to take in the affairs of the actual People, he was in no humour for hesitation.
He had mapped out in his brain a certain plan of action, and he was determined to go through with it. The more so, as now a new and close interest had incorporated itself with his life, — an emotion so deep and tender and overwhelming, that he scarcely dared to own it to himself, — scarcely ventured to believe that he, deprived of true love so long, should now be truly loved for himself, at last! But on this he seldom allowed his mind to dwell, — except when quite alone, — in the deep silences of night; — when he gave his soul up to the secret sweetness which had begun to purify and ennoble his innermost nature, — when he saw visioned before him a face, — warm with the passion of a love so grand and unselfish that it drew near to a likeness of the Divine; — a love that asked nothing, and gave everything, with the beneficent glory of the sunlight bestowing splendour on the earth. His lonely moments, which were few, were all the time he devoted to this brooding luxury of meditation, and though his heart beat like a boy’s, and his eyes grew dim with tenderness, as in fancy he dreamed of joy that might be, and that yet still more surely might never be his, — his determined mind, braced and bent to action, never faltered for a second in the new conceptions he had formed of his duty to his people, who, as he now considered, had been too long and too cruelly deceived.
Hence, something like an earthquake shock sent its tremor through the country, when two things were suddenly announced without warning, as the apparent results of the various Cabinet Councils held latterly so often, and in such haste. The first was, that not only had his Majesty accepted the resignation of the Marquis de Lutera as Premier, but that he had decided — provided the selection was entirely agreeable to the Government — to ask M. Carl Pérousse to form a Ministry in his place. The second piece of intelligence, and one that was received with much more favour than the first, by all classes and conditions of persons, was that the Government had issued a decree for the complete expulsion of the Jesuits from the country. By a certain named date, and within a month, every Jesuit must have left the King’s dominions, or else must take the risk of a year’s imprisonment followed by compulsory banishment.
Much uproar and discussion did this mandate excite among the clerical parties of Europe, — much indignation did it breed within that Holy of Holies situate at the Vatican, — which, having launched forth the ban of excommunication, had no further thunderbolts left to throw at the head of the recreant and abandoned Royalty whose ‘temporal power’ so insolently superseded the spiritual. But the country breathed freely; relieved from a dangerous and mischievous incubus. The educational authorities gave fervent thanks to Heaven for sparing them from long dreaded interference; — and when it was known that the excommunicated King was the chief mover in this firm and liberating act, a silent wave of passionate gratitude and approval ran through the multitudes of the people, who would almost have assembled under the Palace walls and offered a grand demonstration to their monarch, who had so boldly carried the war into the enemy’s country and won the victory, had they not been held back and checked from their purpose by the counter-feeling of their disgust at his Majesty’s apparently forthcoming choice of Carl Pérousse as Prime Minister.
Swayed this way and that, the people were divided more absolutely than before into those two sections which always become very dangerous when strongly marked out as distinctly separated, — the Classes and the Masses. The comfortable wedge of Trade, which, — calling itself the Middle-class, — had up to the present kept things firm, now split asunder likewise, — the wealthy plutocrats clinging willy-nilly to the Classes, to whom they did not legitimately belong; and the men of moderate income throwing in their lot with the Masses, whose wrongs they sympathetically felt somewhat resembled their own. For taxation had ground them down to that particularly fine powder, which when applied to the rocks of convention and usage, proves to be of a somewhat blasting quality. They had paid as much on their earnings and their goods as they could or would pay; — more indeed than they had any reasonable right to pay, — and being sick of Government mismanagement, and also of what they still regarded as the King’s indifference to their needs, they were prepared to make a dash for liberty. The expulsion of the Jesuits they naturally looked upon as a suitable retaliation on Rome for the excommunication of the Royal Family; but beyond the intense relief it gave to all, it could not be considered as affecting or materially altering the political situation. So, like the dividing waves of the Red Sea, which rolled up on either side to permit the passage of Moses and his followers — the Classes and the Masses piled themselves up in opposite billowy sections to allow Sergius Thord and the Revolutionary party to pass triumphantly through their midst, adding thousands of adherents to their forces from both sides; — while they were prepared to let the full weight of the billows engulf the King, if, like Pharaoh and his chariots, he assumed too much, or proceeded too far.
Professor von Glauben, seated in his own sanctum, and engaged in the continuance of his “Political History of Hunger,” found many points in the immediate situation which considerably interested him and moved him to philosophical meditation.
“For, — take the feeling of the People as it now is,” he said to himself; “It starts in Hunger! The taxes, — the uncomfortable visit of the tax-gatherer! The price of the loaf, — concerning which the baker, or the baker-ess, politely tells the customer that it is costly, because of the Government tax on corn; then from the bread, it is marvellous how the little clue winds upward through the spider-webs of Trade. The butcher’s meat is dearer, — for says he— ‘The tax on corn makes it necessary for me to increase the price of meat.’ There is no logical reason given, — the fact simply is! So that Hunger commences the warfare, — Hunger of Soul, as well as Hunger of body. ‘Why starve my thought?’ says Soul. ‘Why tax my bread?’ says Body. These tiresome questions continue to be asked, and never answered, — but answers are clamoured for, and the people complain — and then one fierce day the gods hear them grumble, and begin to grumble back! Ach! Then it is thu
nder with a vengeance! Now in my own so-beloved Fatherland, there has been this double grumbling for a long time. And that the storm will burst, in spite of the so-excellently-advertising Kaiser is evident! Hoch! — or Ach? Which should it be to salute the Kaiser! I know not at all, — but I admit it is clever of him to put up a special Hoarding-announcement for the private view of the Almighty God, each time he addresses his troops! And he will come in for a chapter of my history — for he also is Hungry! — he would fain eat a little of the loaf of Britain! — yes! — he will fit into my work very well for the instruction of the helpless unborn generations!”
He wrote on for a while, and then laid down his pen. His eyes grew dreamy, and his rough features softened.
“What has become of the child, I wonder!” he mused; “Where has she gone, the ‘Glory-of-the-Sea’! I would give all I have to look upon her beautiful face again; — and Ronsard — he, poor soul — silent as a stone, weakening day after day in the grasp of relentless age, — would die happy, — if I would let him! But I do not intend to give him that satisfaction. He shall live! As I often tell him, my science is of no avail if I cannot keep a man going, till at least a hundred and odd years are past. Barring accidents, or self-slaughter, of course!” Here he became somewhat abstracted in his meditations. “The old fellow is brave enough, — brave as a lion, and strong too for his years; — I have seen him handle a pair of oars and take down a sail as I could never do it, — and — he has accepted a strange and difficult situation heroically. ‘You must not be involved in any trouble by a knowledge of our movements.’ So Prince Humphry said, when I saw him last, — though I did not then understand the real drift of his meaning. And time goes on — and time seems wearisome without any tidings of those we love!”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 567